Thursday, December 26, 2013

WARNINGS FROM A TRUTH-TELLING TREASURER



CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JANUARY 7, 2014, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “WARNINGS FROM A TRUTH-TELLING TREASURER"


          Every once in awhile, California gets a major public official who thrives on telling the unvarnished truth. In recent history, these have usually held the office of state treasurer, a low-visibility post that can give its occupant plenty of time to ruminate.


          First in this line in the modern era was Jesse Unruh, for whom a political studies institute at USC is now named. Unruh, the ultimate politician during his 1960s tenure as speaker of the state Assembly, predicted while treasurer in the 1970s precisely the kind of budget conundrums California would face for almost 20 years starting in the mid-1990s.


          The early-book favorite to be the next treasurer, current Democratic state Controller John Chiang, also pulls few punches in his monthly reports on state finances and has not hesitated to offend legislators in both major parties by doing things like holding up their pay during a budget impasse.


           Current Treasurer Bill Lockyer, who somewhat like Unruh was once a consummate legislative politician as president of the state Senate, loves to uphold the tradition. Back in 2003, he confided while attorney general that he had voted for a Republican, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the special election to recall then-Gov. Gray Davis, a fellow Democrat. But for years after that, Lockyer never hesitated to cross Schwarzenegger, especially when the muscleman “governator” sometimes tried to treat the attorney general as something like a personal lawyer.


          Now, in a mid-December speech in Thousand Oaks, the about
-to-retire Lockyer has outlined the problems California must solve over the next generation in as bald a manner as Unruh ever did.


          One is that too much of California’s state revenue now comes from income taxes and not enough from other levies like the sales tax. Like others, Lockyer believes this is one reason California continues to see a net out-migration to other states, even as foreign immigration fuels some increases in population.


          He also used the word “alarming” to describe the ever-increasing income gap between rich and poor Californians. Another way to view that gap is as part of the gulf that has developed between coastal and inland Californians.


          This chasm also showed up prominently in a December survey by the usually reliable Field Poll. That sampling found views of California life are far more positive among people in the wealthier coastal counties than inland.


          Example: A clear majority of registered voters surveyed in the San Francisco Bay area described California as one of the best places in America to live. Just one-third of voters in the Central Valley and Inland Empire counties of Riverside and San Bernardino agreed. It is probably no coincidence that unemployment is much higher inland than near the coast.


          Poll director Mark DiCamillo told one reporter that, “…Voters are viewing the state as it relates to their ability to get a job and the economic tenor of the time.”


          Then there’s the gap shown by the survey between senior citizens and younger persons. More than half of Californians who are over 65 rate this as one of the best places to live, compared with about one-third of those aged 40 to 64. The numbers are plainly skewed by the fact that a higher percentage of seniors than younger people own homes outright, and – as DiCamillo observed, “The cost of living has a lot to do with (high prices for) housing. If you can get past that hurdle, California suddenly looks a lot better.”


          Differences in both employment status and home ownership are big parts of the income gap Lockyer focused on.


          The plain-spoken treasurer also worries about state public employee pension plans, saying the California State Teachers Retirement System, in particular, needs fixing or it “in 30 years, implodes.” By contrast, he said the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), providing pensions to public employees not in education, is “more solvent than critics would have people believe.”


          Like Unruh and Chiang, Lockyer sees none of the state’s problems as insoluble. But unless the state faces up to them as in recent years it has with the budget, California will be hurting for decades to come.


    -30-
     Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to
www.californiafocus.net

ELECTION YEAR FOCUS WILL BE AWAY FROM TOP OF TICKET



CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 2104, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “ELECTION YEAR FOCUS WILL BE AWAY FROM TOP OF TICKET”


          In any normal election year, most public attention, newspaper headlines and television reportage centers on top-of-the-ticket jobs like president, governor and U.S. senator.


          Not in 2014. There is no race for either president or U.S. senator in California this year, and with Republicans unable so far to find and recruit a major figure to oppose septuagenarian Jerry Brown’s reelection bid, there might as well not be a race for governor.


          The only question in that so-called contest will be whether Democrat Brown wins a majority in the June primary, like Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein did in 2012. Even if he does, though, he would still have to face off against the No. 2 primary vote-getter in the general election.


          That will leave most focus on so-called down-the-ticket state posts, where some Democrats will vie for an unofficial anointment as the likely successor to Brown.


          While there is one interesting non-partisan entrant, no significant Republicans have yet emerged to run for any secondary statewide office. The GOP holds no statewide offices today.

           
              Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the onetime San Francisco mayor who opposed Brown for awhile in the 2010 Democratic primary – before voters adopted the top-two primary election system for all offices below president – will seek reelection with no major opposition within his party. 


          Attorney General Kamala Harris will look to increase the razor-thin margin by which she won election over former Los Angeles County District Atty. Steve Cooley last time out. And the popular Dave Jones will seek another term as insurance commissioner, most likely opposed by conservative GOP State Sen. Ted Gaines of Rocklin.


    State Controller John Chiang, about to be termed out, will try for treasurer, possibly opposed by former Central Coast Republican legislator Sam Blakeslee. And soon to be termed out Assembly Speaker John Perez aims to replace Chiang as controller in this game of musical chairs, opposed by Board of Equalization member Betty Yee, a fellow Democrat. If he wins, Perez would be the first openly gay person elected statewide in California.


          There’s a four-way race to succeed termed-out Secretary of State Debra Bowen. This includes two state senators, Alex Padilla from the San Fernando Valley portion of Los Angeles and Leland Yee of San Francisco. A third entrant is Derek Cressman, head of state operations for the Common Cause good government lobby, with Dan Schnur, director of USC’s Unruh Institute for Politics, the fourth. Schnur, former spokesman for both for ex-Gov. Pete Wilson and one of Arizona Sen. John McCain’s Republican presidential runs, is no longer registered GOP, but now an independent.


          Any of these folks who does spectacularly would be strongly positioned to run for governor four years from now. But any or all of them might do it anyway. Watching these races is like taking in a Triple A baseball game to check out which top minor leaguers might someday become big leaguers.


          There will also be plenty of initiative and referendum action, all concentrated in November, timing dictated two years ago by the Legislature for popularly-qualified measures.


          Expect big fall spending on two referenda, one to roll back a law passed at midyear giving transgender students in public schools the choice of which bathroom to use and which gender’s sports programs to choose. Another referendum would cancel compacts allowing the North Fork Rancheria of Mono Indians to build a large off-reservation casino.


          The state’s ongoing political battle over public employee pensions and their impact on local and state budgets will also likely make the ballot, as San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and officials of a few other cities propose to allow altering of future pension benefits while letting stand those already earned and vested. There's also a measure letting the insurance commissioner veto or alteration all health insurance price increases.


          Other possible ballot entrants include one to totally legalize marijuana and two aiming to ease teacher firings.


          Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats both boast of wresting one or two seats from the other, but anything more than a small shift in the state’s current party balance in the House of Representatives is unlikely.


          All of which means this won’t be the most spectacular of election years, but it still will pack plenty of action, voters as usual called upon to make the important public policy decisions.


    -30-
     Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to
www.californiafocus.net.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

GOP’S NEW HISPANIC OUTREACH ANOTHER FUTILE EXERCISE



CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 3, 2014, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “GOP’S NEW HISPANIC OUTREACH ANOTHER FUTILE EXERCISE”


          Give the Republican Party credit: After drawing fewer than 23 percent of Latino votes in the last presidential election, the GOP will now spend $10 million nationally trying to build permanent ground organizations and “a year-round presence” in Latino neighborhoods around the nation.


          But also recognize that this is strictly tokenism: You don’t sway the nation’s fastest-growing ethnic voting bloc by spending less on it than on many campaigns for a single seat in Congress.


          You also don’t win over Latinos simply by saying you’re going to be hanging around their neighborhoods and pestering them from time to time.


          And you don’t win over Latinos or any other ethnic group simply by recruiting candidates “who look like them,” one of the nostrums pledged by Jim Brulte, the onetime state senator who now chairs the California Republican Party.


          Nope, there appear to be only two ways for the Republican Party to win even close to half the Latino vote (about 73 percent of Hispanics cast ballots last time for Democratic President Barack Obama):


          One is to run a celebrity candidate a la Arnold Schwarzenegger. Each time he ran for governor, he pulled almost half the Latino vote, chiefly because (exit polls showed), many youthful Hispanics thought having the “Terminator” as governor was cool. Trouble is, there are no prominent celebrities now publicly evincing interest in running as Republicans for any office.


          The second way to win over voters – and Latinos are no different than others – is to take policy positions congruent with their views. The GOP isn’t doing this, either.


          Its members in the House of Representatives have bottled up the Senate’s immigration bill, even though the plan's pathway to citizenship for the undocumented is extremely arduous, for about six months, knowing full well it would pass if it ever came to a vote.


          They’re still in denial about climate change. They do what they can to thwart abortions. And so on and on.


          They believe their stances are congruent with most Hispanic voters on almost all issues except immigration, where many of their leaders are on record saying that unauthorized immigrants all are criminals who cost the American taxpayer billions of dollars.


          But polling by the usually reliable Latino Voices firm has found in the last year that Latinos back measures to limit greenhouse gases and climate change, while also favoring abortion on demand and strict gun controls. Plus, several surveys have found Latinos – like other voters – mostly blame Republicans in Congress for last fall’s lengthy government shutdown and the brinksmanship over whether to raise the national debt ceiling or risk defaulting on bonds and other loans.


          So the GOP assumption about Latinos eventually joining them because of their adamant stances on social and fiscal issues does not fly.


          But it’s immigration that hurts Republicans most. One Latino Decisions survey last summer found that about three-fourths of U.S. citizen Hispanics have either a family member or close acquaintance who is undocumented. Legalizing those people is their No. 1 issue.


          But the closest congressional Republicans have come to acquiescing on that issue is to allow some concessions to so-called “Dreamers,” children brought here by unauthorized immigrant parents.


          That won’t cut it in the vote-getting department.


          Even some Republicans realize this. Lanhee Chen, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who was presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s policy director in the 2012 campaign, told a reporter the party’s message “is going to be very difficult to convey unless we can demonstrate some seriousness about solving the broken immigration system.”


          That’s an understatement. The typical GOP outreach effort in recent years has been to eat an enchilada in a Mexican-American neighborhood while listening to a mariachi band.


          But Jennifer Korn, the Republican National Committee’s deputy political director for Hispanic initiatives, told a luncheon last fall that the new GOP outreach is different from past ones. “We’re starting early…and we’re going to stay even after the (2014) election is over,” she said.


          That’s little more than a repeat of the usual Republican whistling past the Latino graveyard. For the party will win over very few Latinos unless it invests much more and changes some of its fundamental positions.


    -30-
     Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to
www.californiafocus.net

THERE'S HOPE FOR ‘DISCLOSE ACT’ IN 2014



CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2013, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “THERE'S HOPE FOR ‘DISCLOSE ACT’ IN 2014”


          If there’s one main reason behind the distrust many Californians feel for government and elected officials at all levels, it may be the way special interests regularly pour millions of dollars into election campaigns while managing to hide their identities.


          There was hope last year for an end to the sense of political impotence and frustration this often produces among voters. With two-thirds majorities for Democrats in both houses of the state Legislature and a governor who helped write this state’s original clean elections law, the Political Reform Act of 1975, the expectation was that a major disclosure bill would pass.


          But those two-thirds majorities turned out to be ephemeral and sporadic, coming and going irregularly as politicians played musical chairs when vacancies occurred in congressional, state Senate and Assembly seats.


          So the single legislative bill that could have done the most to restore trust in time for next year’s election languished. It’s not dead, having been turned into a two-year bill after it passed the Senate by an easy 28-11margin, with most Republicans voting no.


          But no Assembly Republican voted for the bill, known informally as the DISCLOSE Act and officially as SB 52, originally sponsored by Sens. Mark Leno of San Francisco and Jerry Hill of San Mateo.


          So when it was due for an August hearing in an Assembly elections committee, it was converted into a two-year bill instead, with that house due to take it up again in 2014.


          There is no way this or any other proposal can hope to keep big money, both from within California and outside, from playing a major role in the state’s politics, electoral and initiative. But this measure is intended at least to let voters know who is paying for what.


          The need for a law like this became urgent after the U.S. Supreme Court’s notorious 2010 Citizens United decision declared corporations the equivalent of human beings, giving them the right to donate limitless amounts to political campaigns not formally controlled by candidates.


          This led to independent expenditure committees, which run ads at the very least dovetailing with those of the candidates. So we get subterfuge, as with the last-minute 2012 dumping of millions of dollars into California proposition campaigns by out-of-state groups with vague names and anonymous donors, many still secret.


          The DISCLOSE Act, first sponsored in the Legislature by former Democratic Assemblywoman Julia Brownley of Ventura County, now a congresswoman, would force every political TV commercial in California to disclose its three largest funders prominently for six seconds at the start of the ads, rather than using small print at the end. Similar rules would apply to print and radio ads, mass mailers, billboards and websites.


          So voters would know before they heard a message who is behind it.


          This bill passed the Assembly in 2012, but time ran out before the Senate considered it.


          Its passage in the new year has the backing of Assembly Speaker John Perez of Los Angeles, giving it a strong shot of getting the two-thirds backing it needs to become law so long as the Democrats’ current two-thirds majority proves a bit more stable than it was through most of 2013.


          The need for transparency allowing voters to peel away the veil of anonymity many campaign donors now hide behind is more pressing today than ever, thanks to the unlimited quantities of cash corporations can deploy.


          That’s what made the DISCLOSE Act the most important bill the Legislature considered in the past year, more so than fracking regulations, prison changes, drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants or anything else. It will be again in 2014.


          Other open-government bills will also be on the docket in this session, but if this one passes, California voters could become the best informed in the nation. And if it happens here, count on it being imitated elsewhere, like many other California-first laws covering everything from medical marijuana to property tax limits.


          But that happens only if this measure gets a two-thirds vote in the Assembly, which the vagaries of 2013 proved is no sure thing.


    -30-
    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net